PITTSBURGH, PA--Black Box Corporation announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) has named its iCOMPEL digital signage appliance as a recipient of a 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award.

The Norwalk, Conn.-based TMC presents the award to businesses that demonstrate vision, leadership, and attention to detail, according to its recognition of Black Box’s digital signage solution. TMC said it picks award recipients that have brought “the most innovative products and services to market,” and cited iCOMPEL as an “outstanding” contribution to the communications industry.

“Black Box has been recognized with a 2008 Product of the Year Award for their excellence in the advancement of voice, data, and video communications,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC President and Group editor-in-chief. “Black Box has proven they are committed to quality and excellence in solutions that benefit the customer experience as well as ROI for the companies that use them. I am pleased to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from them in the future.”

The iCOMPEL family of browser-based, networked media players/appliances provides businesses and organizations of any size with an affordable, out-of-the-box solution for improving internal and external communications through relevant, dynamic digital signage. Black Box’s iCOMPEL can stream live TV, video, Flash animation, and RSS news and stock ticker feeds, and other Web media, as well as play audio. It enables either a local user or a remote administrator to change information ad-hoc to generate real-time messaging via local access or through a Web browser.

“Digital signage can potentially be a very expensive initial and ongoing investment and, because of its complexity, it can be difficult to integrate into an existing office or campus network,” Kutchma said. “But our strategy with iCOMPEL was to make it an affordable, easy-to-integrate solution that’s also scalable, so a business can start with one screen in one location and expand to 1000 screens in 100 locations.”